VERY few people enter into a Gareth Pugh fashion show expecting to feel comforted, but his AW18 show, held last night at the cavernous Ambika P3 exhibition space, carried a particularly ominous vibe. With lighting so low, I could barely see my notes in front of me, BBC stalwart Graham Norton had to use the flashlight on his phone just to find his seat next to mine. Not unsurprisingly, he appeared to be a little perturbed by the collection.
Barbed wire headpieces came down the runway with a motif of huge, massive, nose-breakingly large shoulder pads – lord help whoever gets in the way of the Gareth Pugh woman this season, as they’ll likely lose an eye one way or another. A sort of full-head ski mask, perforated with what must have been hundreds of metal pins, looking positively lifted from the movie Hellraiser, if not a slightly more morbid-looking version.
The palette consisted of just four colours – black, royal blue, steel grey and leopard print, which I vehemently maintain is a neutral, and is certainly used here as so. But the grey wasn’t the only steel on the horizon. While fashion week models are generally loathsome to crack a smile, the Gareth girls walked with a kind of determination, eyes levelled, that would make anyone walking on a collision course with her leap out of the way in reverence. And it suits the clothing as well. exaggerated and cartoonish silhouettes contribute to the alien-like quality of the show, where PVC is used less as a construction material and more as an alternative to cotton.
Overall, it’s a surprisingly wearable collection at its core, and one that has a very flatteringly hyper-femininity structure to it. Part of Pugh’s inspiration this season was demolition, and out of the rubble of his AW18 garments, a clear and conscious effort to empower the women who wear his designs has arisen.
by Thomas Marrington
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.